Students Love Singapore Math!

Last May, third graders at a school in Minnesota wrote me some letters. Their school started with a Singapore Mathematics curriculum in the fall and they were just completing their first year working with the materials. I’m told that students weren’t “required” to write these.  ?

Enjoy!

 

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Great Math News from City Springs School In Baltimore

For the last year, I’ve been working with City Springs Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore. Here’s a short description from the school’s website:

City Springs Elementary/Middle School is a neighborhood charter school operated by the Baltimore Curriculum Project (BCP). We are a conversion charter school, which means we were an already existing Baltimore City Public School that was taken over by an outside operator to bring innovative and research-based curriculum and other programs to enhance the school. To learn more about BCP, click here.

City Springs logoInitially, the school was seeking help with its Middle School math. After I made a pair of on-site visits at the end of the 2014-2015 school year, Dr. Rhonda Richetta, Principal of City Springs, decided to adopt Singapore’s Primary Mathematics Common Core Edition.

I’ve returned to City Springs periodically this year to provide continuing support as the school’s teachers and coaches adopted a Singapore Math® curriculum. The school is making remarkable progress, and I want to share stories written by some of City Springs’ dedicated teachers about the students’ growth during the year.

I’ve clipped an excerpt from each story with teachers’ observations and very valuable insights about the program and why it is working so well for their students. Please click on the links to read complete stories from the school’s website. I love the photos of students showing off their skills and having fun with math!

Ms. Schoenleber: Introducing Singapore Math  (November 2015) “Classroom manipulatives have helped our kids get better at problem solving and justifying their answers for tough math problems.”

Ms. Hagemann: It’s More than Just a Game (November 2015) “One way to get stronger in mental math is by use math-based games to reinforce basic concepts and encourage mathematical thinking…Students in Ms. Hageman’s class love mental math games!”

Ms. Smith: Moving Ahead in Mathh (February 2016) “Singapore Math has been very challenging but it has also been very rewarding, and they have especially loved the use of manipulatives in class.”

Ms. Barry: Stepping Up to the Ratio Challenge (February 2016) “Ratio problems can be really tricky. Sometimes these multi-step problems are so challenging that we spend 15, 30, or even 45 minutes on one problem! Our students love to rise to the challenge, and have grown so much in their math skills with these complex problems.”

Ms. Barry’s also class wanted to challenge readers to solve a ratio problem they worked on. How did you do?

Ms. Lineberry:  Introducing Fractions  (May 2016) “At first, we struggled to figure fractions out. Trying to wrap our minds around halves and fourths proved difficult at first. Things became a little clearer after we started using “manipulatives,” hands-on objects used to illustrate math concepts.”

Ms. Williams: Knowing All the Angles (May 2016) “Students began their geometrical journey by learning how to measure angles…Later, they will start learning to measure geometric angles made by two lines emanating out of the center of a circle, and eventually beginning exploring the complex world of geometry formulas.”

Working with City Springs has been one of the most rewarding and enjoyable assignments of my career. Teachers have embraced the challenge of adopting a new program and students are making wonderful progress. I can’t wait to see their growth in Year Two! Thank You, City Springs!

[Full disclosure: My work assignment at City Springs is contracted through Staff Development for Educators.]
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You Can Bar Model Anything!

nauty nice bar model

A fourth grader at a school I worked with this year included this on a Christmas card for her teacher.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for an Outstanding New Year!

 

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Singapore Math® Schools Share Success Stories

Word Problems 2Excellence in Canadian math education — by way of Singapore

The Head of School at Trafalgar Castle School in Whitby, Ontario explains why his school adopted Math from Singapore and how it differs from other curricula:

We introduced Singapore Math to our school three years ago after researching a number of programs and determining that this method had the best achievement results internationally.

Singapore Math deliberately slows down the teaching of math, taking more time to ensure students grasp each concept before moving on. For example, students might spend two weeks on multiplying fractions, instead of spending a day or two and then coming back to it later.

Students use visuals aids such as bars and blocks before they start writing equations with “x” and “y,” so they achieve a deeper grasp of the actions they perform. This visualization is not deployed nearly as much in Canadian classrooms. In most settings, you would see a concrete-abstract strategy whereby multiplication would use physical objects then shift to the abstraction of lining up numbers in a multiplication equation. Singapore Math introduces a middle step between the concrete and abstract called the pictorial approach. The students draw a diagram of the concepts going on. This extends to diagraming word problems on paper rather than the often frustrating scenario of trying to picture a problem in their heads.

One happy result of all this is that when students reach algebra, they’ve already met the core concepts pictorially; indeed in most cases students in grade 6 are able to understand algebraic concepts that normally wouldn’t be grasped until mid-way through grade 8.

North Cross School transitions to Singapore Math

North Cross School is the first school in the Roanoke Valley (Virginia) to fully implement the Singapore Math® curriculum.

Beth Curran is the Mathematics Department Chair in the lower school at St. Anne’s-Belfield in Charlottesville and led the training at North Cross School. When asked about their conversion to Singapore Math she said “during our first year of implementation our students were saying ‘I understand math now.’ One of our second grade teachers commented, ‘At this point in the year (first trimester), I have never had students with such a solid understanding of place value.’ Upon conclusion of our first year, our math team felt that our students’ problem solving skills made huge leaps. We also noticed that students were persevering through difficult problems that in the past (or even the beginning of the year) they would have given up on. We didn’t teach perseverance, necessarily, but concluded that because students were learning and practicing skills to mastery that it equipped them with the tools to tackle challenging problems. They always had a place to start.”

North Cross Lower School Director, Deborah Jessee, believes that “a strong education in lower school builds a foundation of lifelong learning. It lays the pathways, creates excitement, and energizes students for the future. Singapore Math is a great way to enhance our lower school academic program and teach children not to be intimidated by new concepts and that it’s okay to explore other ways of learning. They learn to not be intimidated by a complex problem. When a student understands how to break down a problem and can figure out how to solve it, that academic skill translates well to other subjects and helps them prepare for ACT and SAT testing down the road.

[Editor’s Note: Over the past several years, I’ve had the honor of helping St. Anne’s-Belfield School with its Singapore Math adoption. I’m delighted that Beth Curran was able to take her experiences and successfully train teachers at North Cross School. Congratulations, Beth!]

Singapore math forced teachers to learn new way to teach

Learning Singapore Math in Henderson County (Kentucky) first took hard work by teachers; previous math approach “made cooks…this makes chefs.”

At the heart of the Singaporean approach to math is problem solving. This math curriculum doesn’t focus as much on memorizing procedures, but understanding numbers and how they interact, officials said.
It’s the how and the why, [third-grade teacher Evelyn] Cummings said.
Educators said this isn’t how mathematics has been taught in the United States.
“Before I would teach my students a process, instead of problem solving. Now, we’re teaching these kids to be problem-solvers,” Cummings said.
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Northport Elementary builds Critical Thinking with Math AND the Arts

Here’s an outstanding school I work with that is doing wonderful things with Singapore Mathematics…and now the Arts!

 I’ll share more about what these stellar students achieved in mathematics in coming weeks!

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